§420 the vastness of heaven 241
a. The elect are people who lead lives of goodness and truth: 3755 , 3900. There is no election and
acceptance into heaven out of mercy as this is commonly understood, only in keeping with one’s
life: 5057 , 5058. There is no direct mercy of the Lord, only an indirect mercy, that is, for people
who live by his precepts, whom he, out of mercy, is constantly leading while they are in the world
and afterward to eternity: 10659 , 8700.
b. The poor in the Word means people who are spiritually poor, people who do not know what is
true but still long to learn: 9209 , 9253 , 10227. When it says that they are hungry and thirsty, it is
referring to their longing to encounter what is good and true and to be led in this way into the
church and heaven: 4958 , 10227.
I have been allowed to see the extent of the inhabited heaven and also 419
the extent of the uninhabited heaven; and I have seen that the uninhabited
heaven is so vast that it could never be filled to all eternity even if there
were thousands of thousands of planets with as many people on each one
as there are on ours. On this subject, see [Other] Planets in the Universe 168.
Because they take a few passages from the Word literally, some peo- 420
ple think that heaven is not vast but small. For example, there are places
where it says that only the poor will be accepted into heaven, or only the
elect, or only people in the church and not people from outside, or only
people for whom the Lord makes intercession, or that heaven will be
closed when it is full, and that the time for this is foreordained. These
people do not realize that heaven will never be closed; that there is no
foreordained time, no fi xed number; and that “the elect” are people who
live lives of goodness and truth;a that “the poor” are people who have not
found out what is good and true but who long to (they are also called
“the hungry” because of this longing).b
People who think that heaven is small because they have misunderstood
the Word can only be thinking that heaven is in a single place where every-
one is gathered together. Yet in fact heaven consists of countless commu-
nities. (See above, §§ 41 – 50 .) Further, they can only be thinking that heaven
is granted to individuals out of direct mercy and therefore consists simply of
admission and acceptance out of good will. They do not realize that the
Lord, out of his mercy, leads everyone who accepts him, and that the people
who accept him are the people who live according to the laws of the divine
design, which are precepts of love and faith. They do not realize that being
led by the Lord from infancy to the end of earthly life and then on to eter-
nity is what mercy really means. If only they knew that everyone is born for
heaven, that people are accepted into heaven who accept heaven into them-
selves in this world, and that people who do not accept it are shut out!